Blood in the Havens
by GwennielOfNargothrond
Summary: Gil-galad arrives too late to the confusion that is the kinslaying in the Havens of Sirion. What he looks for is lost, and dark are the surprises he comes upon.


_This is an edited excerpt (so as to make sense without 50,000 words of context) from a NaNoWriMo project about Gil-galad that I wrote. It has been translated from Finnish for your reading pleasure. It is rated T for blood, battle, character death, and other things you might expect from a kinslaying._

* * *

**Blood in the Havens**

"If the havens of Sirion are under attack upon arrival," said Gil-galad, "the most important mission will be to defend the local people, and only after that should we focus on attacking the enemy."

"Is that not the same thing?" somebody asked.

"This time the enemy will most likely be elves," the High-King replied. "It would be better for everybody if we could meet them with as little fighting as possible." The soldiers around him nodded. "You all can now guess who is assaulting the havens."

"The Sons of Fëanor."

"Then you also know what they are after," said Gil-galad. "They are not like Orcs, who will kill anybody without the slightest consideration. They have a specific target for which they are fighting for. That target will need extra protection."

They all understood.

"Does Princess Elwing know we are coming?" asked Gelmir.

Gil-galad admitted that she had not been informed directly. "But she does know that I have promised to help her."

"Those bastards of Fëanor," Arminas cried with anger and grief. "How can they attack Sirion, when some of their own people live there? Kinslayers they have been since the day Fëanor first raised his sword against Fingolfin!"

Gil-galad did not stay to listen. He climbed up the highest mast to the crow's nest to look out on the waters. The evening had been cloudy since before sunset, before the news of the attack on mainland. Now, in the dark night, he could see little but the bleak fog lit up by their lanterns. The Fëanoreans were by no means bad strategists. They had attacked Doriath in snow and midwinter's darkness, and now they attacked Sirion in thick fog and ill wind that slowed all aid that the Isle of Balar could hope to provide. On top of that, Gil-galad and Círdan had not received the call for aid until the attack had already begun. He hoped that Elwing's troops could keep away the Sons of Fëanor long enough, or that Elwing would just this once put aside her pride and give up the Silmaril to end the fighting.

Soon the wind turned, allowing them to speed up, but the night was already old by the time they reached the harbour. Gil-galad told the mariners to take off the lanterns from the masts and to prepare for fighting. Some of the mariners, of course, needed to stay in the ships, so that they would not come under attack or theft and so that they would be ready for a possible quick departure. Gil-galad stood at the prow, Aeglos in hand. Fire roamed on the docks.

When they finally arrived, the battle seemed to be already dying down, yet Sirion was still in chaos. Swordfighting on the beach, bows shooting form the rooftops, and bodies lying on the streets, dead either from an enemy's blow or from the flames.

Then a call went out. "Ereinion is here!" some cried at the sight of their ships. "King Ereinion, you come at last!"

"Kill the Fëanoreans," called someone else. "Kill the traitors."

"But I am not on their side," a voice said. "Please believe me: I don't want to fight on their side any more."

Gil-galad frowned upon hearing such a thing. His eyes swept across the crowd from where he thought he had heard the voice. "Whose side is he on, ours or theirs?"

"Theirs," came the answer. "His shirt clearly has the eight-pointed star."

"No, I left their service!"

"So did I!" shouted someone else.

Gil-galad did not know what to think of it. Were some servants of the Sons of Fëanor willing to abandon their masters in the midst of a battle? But he did not have time to stay here to settle things.

"Remain with these people to clear out this issue," he gave orders to a group under his command. "See that you kill no one who repents, but be careful that you are not tricked." To the rest of his troop he said. "Let's go to the city! From there a third will turn to the eastern part of the city under the command of Círdan, and half will come with me to west!"

He led them through alleys that were bordered with houses that were the reasons to the fire they had seen from the ships. Gil-galad tried not to think of the corpses lying on the street, but he had a strong feeling of that the battle had ended already before their arrival and that they would only have to deal with a grievous aftermath. Still he hurried towards the house of Elwing as fast as he could. On their way they met some Elves who, rekindled with hope, joined their groups, but they also met enemies who upon seeing them threw their swords to the ground and said they did not wish to fight any more. These elves preplexed Gil-galad the most.

"I swear to you, I will no longer fight under the banner of Prince Maglor," said one, eyes desperate as he showed them his empty hands. "Shoot me if you dont believe me, but I don't want to fight for the diamonds of a dead madman if it means I have to murder elves."

"I was supposed to kill orcs," said another, already lying on the ground, a deep wound in his side. "I though the kinslaying at Alqualondë would never happen again. I would fight on your side, if only I could," he said, trying to tear off a brooch shaped as the star of Fëanor.

Gil-galad wondered whether this could be a trick staged by Fëanoreans, an attempt to lure them into trusting their enemies, but soon they also met some last desperate followers of Fëanor, who still swore oaths in the name of Prince Amras as they fell in their last battle. But meetings like these were ill planned, more like desperate last attempts, and they were few to begin with. More soldiers were already lying dead, sometimes slain together side by side, sometimes one having killed the other.

"What dark curse of Morgoth have they practiced," Gil-galad muttered, starting to feel that this all could not have happened on its own.

Finally reaching the house of Elwing, they were met at the door by a small group of soldiers in Fëanorean armour. "King Ereinion Gil-galad," said one of them without raising his sword. "You arrive late."

"What do you mean?" asked Gil-galad, his voice tense.

"Elwind and the Silmaril are no longer here."

"Where are they?"

"Do not waste time on arguing with them," hissed Arminas from behind him. "We need to find the princess."

"Elwing had fled with the Silmaril long before we even came," the Fëanorean scoffed. "She had her sons with her, but as far as I have understood, they were lost from their mother when she went into a state of shock."

"Elwing would not abandon her sons," said Gil-galad, preparing his spear for attack. When he raised his hand, the soldier drew forth his sword, but did not prepare for a blow.

"I understand that you are angry, but would you not, before killing us, rather see the gift we have left you?"

"What do you mean?" the king grunted. "Take their weapons," he commanded those around him.

These Fëanoreans were, however, not of those who repented, who would be stripped of their weapons as easily, and only after they had fallen to the ground half-dead only because they were less in strength, could Gil-galad pass them. He entered the house cautiously, glancing around him at a room messy from battle. Even in the princess's reception room, there were no signs of life, but Gil-galad was looking for that "gift" the soldier had mentioned, half expecting to see some ghastly image of mockery of himself or of Elwing, or at least a surprise attack. But he saw nothing but broken furniture and bodies lying in a pile in one corner. He was about to go to have a closer look at said pile, no matter how disgusting it was, but then he heard Gelmir draw breath sharply and turned around quickly to see what it was about.

For a second Gil-galad thought that the corpse lying in the puddle of blood, a hunting knife sticking from his breast, was on fire, but then he realized that the red gleam was the dead elf's hair. Then he saw that beside the body there lay another, an identical, also slain with a knife. So identical that the image was almost haunting. Gil-galad had never met these two when they had still been alive, but he recognized the white star of Fëanor, purposefully smudged with blood, and he guessed their identity.

"Princes Amrod and Amras," said Gelmir quietly, staring at the youngest sons of Fëanor lying side by side.

"What is going on?" Gil-galad mumbled, turning away. "Why have the followers of Fëanor turned against their own lords?"

"As I guessed," said Gelmir from behind him. "These knives belonged to the princes themselves."

Gil-galad left the room. "We need to find Elwing," he said. "Or at least find out what has happened to her." He strode over the bodies they had left on the steps in front of the entrance. "And Princes Maedhros and Maglor may yet be alive." He wondered whether the older brothers knew what had happened to their young siblings. He felt the power of the Sons of Fëanor was crumbling.

They marched through the town, now asking the people they met, whether they had seen Elwing. Based on what they heard, the princess had upon hearning the warning bells tolling ordered the majority of her troops to attack and defend and taken the rest with her to bring the Silmaril out of the city. Her sons had gone with her.

"If only she had surrendered the Silmaril," Gil-galad muttered after a Sinda on the streets had told them how the princess had encouraged them to fight, and predicted a victory after Fëanorians had started to betray their own.

But the Sinda did not agree. "No, that she should not have done!" he exclaimed even as he coughed blood. "Under no circumstance should she have given the treasure of Thingol to those greedy murderers," he went on. "That would have been shameful."

"But so much death could have been..."

"Would we truly have given up?" The Sinda shook his head. "Princess Lúthien, not Prince Maedhros, was the one who took the silmaril from Morgoth. The Sons of Fëanor think they can regain the Silmaril simply because it was made by their father. But that does not matter: their father was mad, and so are his decendants."

Gil-galad did not stay to argue, but he noticed soon that almost all of the Sindar agreed witht he opinion. Few believed that it would have been better, had the Silmaril been returned to the Sons of Fëanor. Maybe they were mad all of them.

The news did not reveal the fate of Elwing, and the fighting had almost ended in the city. The eastern sky turned red as the sun rose, and Gil-galad's troops returned to the harbour. There they were met by all the survivors of the cirt, most of the soldiers who had come from Balar, and a group of prisoners consisting of soldiers who had deserted the troops of the Fëanoreans.

"Any news of Elwing?" Gil-galad asked Círdan. "We have only heard that she has escaped with the Silmaril."

Círdan sighed. "Then you shall learn what we have heard," he said. "According to the rumours, Elwing did set off to take the Silmaril to safety, but we heard that by the time Maedhros and Maglor found her group, she was no longer with them. She and her sons must have set off to another direction when the group was attacked.

"Did they leave alone?" Gil-galad inquired.

Círdan shrugged wearily. "Here many tales differ from each other, as some say she bravely took the Silmaril to safety, whereas others say she had a breakdown in which she could think of nothing besides her stone, incapable of anything besides protecting it."

"Where did she go? Is she dead?" Gil-galad asked, biting his lip.

"She fled the city. According to them," Círdan nodded towards the Fëanorean prisoners, "to the cliffs further away, where she was surrounded by Princes Maedhros and Maglor and their group. She still refused to give up the Silmaril. She said she could never betray her parents, blamed the Fëanorians for the deaths of her brothers, and then... she fled down the cliff."

"How?"

"By jumping."

"How?" Gil-galad asked again, unable to comprehend. "The sea there is filled with rocks, impossible to cross by boat."

Círdan did not reply, simply bowing his head, but one of the ex-Fëanorians said: "But we saw a gull rising with a Silmaril in its feet!"

"What do you mean?" Gil-galad turned towards him.

"Elwing may be dead, but the Silmaril isn't lost."

"I bet you are hoping that Elwing is dead," a citizen of Sirion snapped, raising his sword. Gil-gald stayed the quarrel.

"Even if the gull had somehow snatched the Silmaril, by now it's most likely somewhere in the dephts of the sea."

"At least it is not in the hands of the Sons of Fëanor," said Círdan.

"What about Elrond and Elros?" said Gil-galad.

For a moment Círdan stood silent. "They did not run as fast as their mother," he said at last. "From what we have heard, they were found by the Fëanoreans, but we have not yet... found the bodies."

Gil-galad remembered Amrod and Amras in their puddle, and forced himself not to think of Elrond and Elros in a similiar fate. By Eru, they were only six years old! If Eärendil returned from his journey, how would Gil-galad explain it all.

"What are the Fëanoreans planning now?" asked somebody. "Will they return?"

"No," said Gil-galad. "If the Silmaril was no longer here, they will have no need to come here any more." He turned to face the people, climbing atop of a pile of thick rope that was lying on the docks. "Still I suggest that the people of Sirion will come with us to the Isle of Balar. Your city is ruined, and if Morgoth has any intentions of coming here, this hour of our weakness is when he would strike."

Still, as the shivering citizens of the once fair havens climbed aboard the ships, Gil-galad felt that Morgoth would have no need of attacking them. The Sons of Fëanor had already played into his hands.


End file.
